WARNING: This story contains disturbing details. Reader discretion is advised.
When confronted with evidence and pressed by RCMP to “take the path of truth” and reveal what happened in the bathroom of the Langley home he shared with Naomi Onotera, Obnes Regis detailed a fight.
“When we going, going like that, I punch her,” Regis said as he moved his arms back and forth in the air.
“When I hit her, she fell down,” he added.
During the videotaped police interview recorded two days after the then-49-year-old’s arrest on Dec. 17, 2021, Regis talked about an argument with his wife over when to put their young daughter to bed.
The two-and-a-half-hour interview was admitted as evidence on March 7 during a B.C. Supreme Court voir dire, a separate pre-trial hearing to determine what evidence will be admissible during trial.
The video and other exhibits were recently released to Global News following a court application.
Onotera, a Surrey School District teacher-librarian, was reported missing on Aug. 29, 2021, and was last seen leaving her home a day earlier.
During the Dec. 19, 2021, interview at the Langley RCMP detachment, then Cpl. Ashley Harker asked Regis what happened after Onotera fell down.
Regis emitted an audible sigh before stating, “Big loss, big loss. It’s hard, big loss, big loss.”
Regis is charged with manslaughter and indignity to human remains in his wife’s death.
An Admission of Facts also entered as evidence during the voir dire states that on Dec. 15, 2021, Regis took undercover police officers to the location in Fort Langley where he allegedly disposed of Onotera’s bones.
According to the document, the accused told the officers that during the evening of Aug. 29, 2021, and through the early hours of Aug. 30, he used public transit and cabs to travel with his two-year-old daughter to Maple Ridge, Lougheed SkyTrain Station in Burnaby, Langley and Fort Langley.
CCTV surveillance also admitted as evidence captured parts of their journey, including Regis at the Lougheed Skytrain Station carrying his daughter in his arms and wearing a black backpack.
During the formal interview on Dec. 19, 2021, Harker showed Regis a photo and told him, “I know what was in this backpack.”
According to the Admission of Facts, the accused told undercover officers he had rinsed Onotera’s bones after cutting them with a saw into little “finger-size” pieces, which he placed in plastic grocery bags in his backpack.
Regis allegedly used his hands to demonstrate throwing handfuls of the bones toward the river’s edge. Some of the bones ended up in the Fraser River he stated, while others landed in the bushes.
According to the court filing, the accused also told undercover officers he became worried during a previous police search of his home when the dog smelled the electric saw he “had used to cut Ms. Onotera’s bones.”
Harker presented Regis with a photo of the same saw during the video interview. “Parts of Naomi were found in there,” the Mountie said.
RCMP seized the mitre saw on Sept. 15, 2021, from the front lawn of the home Regis shared with Onotera. A forensic examination found its blade cover contained DNA and hair from Onotera’s remains.
After Fort Langley, Regis and the undercover police officers went to his Langley residence the same day, according to the Admission of Facts.
While there, Regis allegedly told undercover officers he initially used a blue handsaw to try and cut Onotera’s bones and also pointed out two knives he said he had used to dispose of her body.
The document states undercover police officers left the home with the handsaw, a purple knife, a green knife and other items Regis had pointed out to them.
Onotera’s DNA was later discovered on the blue handsaw and purple knife.
In a dramatic moment during Harker’s questioning, Regis got up and started pacing around the RCMP interview room, before sobbing loudly and collapsing to the floor, with the Mountie supporting his fall.
Harker is then seen sitting on the floor with Regis for several minutes, telling the accused he has “so much courage” and is “brave and strong.”
When pressured to explain what happened next “after that one punch,” Regis eventually responded “She pass out. She pass away…it’s hard.”
“You feel that heaviness, every day. You feel that heaviness, especially, when you carry it yourself. It’s a heavy load,” the accused told Harker. “It’s the loss, that I will never forget.”
Regis’ trial by judge alone is set to begin May 27.
Earlier this year, Justice Martha Devlin found police officers breached Regis’ charter rights twice during their investigation.
While investigating Onotera’s disappearance, Langley RCMP members entered the couple’s home without a search warrant several times.
On one occasion they also failed to provide Regis access to a lawyer when he was briefly detained, another violation of his Charter-protected rights, Devlin determined.
Regis was not a suspect in his wife’s death at the time of the violations.
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